Louise Mensch

I fundamentally believe that politics is counterintuitive. The left think they're helping working people by providing more rights, but all that actually happens is you create poverty and despair, because jobs go to your competitors who have fewer rights for workers.

What I enjoy doing is challenging stereotypes of what people believe a Tory must be. You don't have to say every Tory is in it for themselves - it's pathetic caricaturing that has no place in the 21st century, and if we can challenge that stereotype, then great.

I have no ambitions to be a cabinet minister, or prime minister. I wouldn't wish being prime minister on my worst enemy.

Your moral stance depends on what you think is being aborted. If you don't believe it to be a person but part of a woman's body, of course you will be pro-choice. I would be virulently pro-choice if I didn't believe it to be a person.

I'm not sure I make old bones in parliament. It's an amazing experience to have had but I can't see myself being Mother of the House.

Money gives you the power to do whatever you want to do. I like the idea of being in complete control of my life.

I like motivational books, because I like the go-getting American spirit - your destiny is in your own hands, life is what you make it, don't accept your limitations, jump before you're pushed, leap before you look.

I want to retire very early, by the time I am 40, and go to live in Italy.

Kane and Abel' is the best popular fiction of all time. As a kid, I wanted to be prime minister when I read 'First Among Equals.'

The nature of the internet is that you don't know who is behind the screen.

In my view, the future of politics is, without a doubt, social liberalism married to economic conservatism. Which means we have to make an economic argument to social liberals, that it's OK to vote for us. But we won't run the economy into the ground at the same time.

We'd all survive if Twitter shut down for a short while during major riots. Social media isn't any more important than a train station, a road or a bus service. We don't worry about police temporarily closing those. Common sense. If riot info and fear is spreading by Facebook and Twitter, shut them off for an hour or two, then restore.